Unclean women:

A woman is unclean for seven days after giving birth to a boy. On the eighth day, the boy will be circumcised, and the mother will spend the next thirty-three days “in the blood of her purifying.” Whatever that means. During that time, she is not allowed to touch anything holy or go to the church.
If she has a daughter, she will be unclean for two weeks and spend sixty-six days in the blood of her purifying. Because, of course, girls are evil.

After her purifying is complete, she will bring a lamb and a pigeon or turtledove to the priest for a sin offering. “Then she shall be clean from the flow of her blood.”

Original text

Things you’re allowed to eat:

• Animals that are cloven-footed and chew cud. If it is only cloven-footed but doesn’t chew cud – or vice-versa – don’t touch it because it’s unclean.
• Water animals that have fins and scales.

Things you’re not allowed to eat:

• Eagles, vultures, kites, falcons, ravens, ostriches, nighthawks, seagulls, hawks, owls, storks, herons, hoopoe and bats.
• Insects other than locusts, crickets and grasshoppers.

Original text

There are a lot of stupid rules here. If you get bored, you can just skip down to the fun cartoon.

4. Sin Offerings:
If you break one of my commandments, bring an animal to the tent and kill it. Bring some of the blood to the priest, and he’ll dip his finger in it and he’ll sprinkle it on the floor seven times. He’ll put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of incense, and pour out the rest at the base of the altar of burnt offering. He’ll remove the fat and the entrails and the kidneys and the liver, and burn them all. Take the rest outside to the ash heap and burn it.
You’re going to follow this procedure for pretty much all types of unintentional sins.

5. Things you’re not allowed to do:
Hear a public adjuration to testify but refuse to testify
Touch an unclean thing (carcasses of unclean wild animals, livestock or swarming things)
Touch human uncleanness
Utter a rash oath to do evil or good
If you do any of these things, bring me a lamb. If you can’t afford a lamb, two turtledoves or pigeons will do. If you can’t afford that, bring me some flour.
Guilt Offerings: If you’re feeling guilty about something, bring me a ram or its value in silver shekels.

6. If you deceive your neighbor in any way, you’ll pay him back whatever it is plus a fifth of its value. Also, bring me a ram.
And tell Aaron and his sons this is how I want the offerings done: Do burnt offerings on the heart of the altar all night until the morning. Wear your linen garment and put the ashes next to the altar. Then put on something else to take the ashes outside.
For grain offerings: eat whatever you don’t burn for me. All your male descendants can have some. It’s holy stuff.
When a priest is anointed, he’ll give me a tenth of an ephah of fine flour. Make it with oil on a griddle.

7. OMG, more laws about offerings…
This is mostly stuff you already know, but you might not know that you’re not allowed to eat the flesh of a sacrifice if you’re unclean. If you do, you’ll be cut off from your people.
If you eat the fat of any animal or any blood, you’ll be cut off from your people.

Original text:

4 5 6 7

1. Burnt Offerings:
God told Moses: Here’s the deal on Burnt Offerings. Tell everyone that animal sacrifices need to come from the herd or the flock. If the offering comes from the herd, it must be a male without blemish. It should be brought to the entrance of the tent. You put your hand on the head of the bull, then kill it, and then Aaron’s sons will throw the blood against the sides of the altar. Then you’ll cut up the animal into pieces and Aaron’s sons will make a fire. Wash the entrails and legs with water, but burn the rest on the fire. I like the smell. If you bring me a goat or sheep, you’ll do the exact same thing.
You may also bring me turtledoves or pigeons. The priest will bring it to the altar, rip its head off and burn it. The blood will be drained out the side of the altar. Remove the feathers and throw them in with the ashes beside the altar. Tear it open by its wings and burn it. I like the smell.

2. Grain Offerings:
Fine flour only. Put oil and frankincense on it and bring it to Aaron’s sons. You’ll take a handful of it and burn it because I like the way it smells, but Aaron and his sons are going to eat the rest.
If you decide to make me some bread, make sure that stuff is unleavened and made of fine flour and covered in oil. Also if it’s cooked on a griddle. You know what, no matter what form you make it, just make sure it’s fine flour and covered in oil. And don’t forget to burn it because I like the smell. Oh, and make sure you put salt on everything, too.

3. Peace Offerings:
If you’re bringing me a peace offering, kill your bull at the entrance to the tent and have Aaron’s sons throw the blood on the side of the altar. I don’t care what you do with the rest of it, but I want the entrails and all their fat, the kidneys with all their fat and the liver. Have Aaron’s sons burn it because I like the smell. But if you bring me a lamb, then I want the tail as well.
Remember, you’re not allowed to eat fat or blood. It’s all mine, nom nom nom.

Original Text:

1 2 3

God was hard up for money, so he asked Moses to ask the people for gold, silver and bronze, along with yarns of blue and purple and scarlet, fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, goatskins, acacia wood, oil, spices, onyx stones and, you know, whatever else they had lying around. He also wanted Moses to have the people build him a house and an ark.

Now, this is not a flood-escaping ark. This ark is a box, and God wanted it to be 36 inches long, 27 inches wide and 27 inches tall. He wanted it to be made out of acacia wood and overlaid with pure gold. “When it’s done,” God said, “make a cover for it out of gold, and do it up with gold angels and stuff. Then you’re going to make a table and overlay that with gold, too. And when it’s done, make me some bread and serve it to me on that table with gold dishes. I’m also going to need a golden lampstand. Make it pretty, with flowers.”

“Oh, yeah,” God said. “I’m going to need a tabernacle made of fine linen, and I want pictures of cherubim woven into it.” Then God talked for like an hour about how exactly he wanted this tabernacle to be made. Then he told Moses how he wanted his house to be arranged. (Some pretty good blueprints can be found here.)

“When all that’s done, you’re going to need to make me an altar. Make it out of acacia wood and cover it in bronze. And the tabernacle is going to need a court, I think twenty bronze pillars ought to do it for the south side. Twenty silver pillars for the north. And I’m afraid of the dark, so I’m going to need an oil lamp to always be burning nearby. Aaron and his crew can take care of that.”

Original text 25 26 27

Moses wrote down all of God’s rules, and then he woke up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai, along with twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes. He got some people to make sacrifices at his altar, and then he took half the blood from the sacrifices and put it in basins. He threw the other half at the altar. When all the people had gathered, he read to them from the book he’d just written, and they agreed to do whatever God said. Then Moses threw blood on the people. Oh, gross.

Moses and Aaron got a couple guys named Nadab and Abihu and seventy elders of Israel, and they all went into the mountain to hang out with God. After some food and drink and partying, God asked Moses to come to the top of the mountain so he could give him some stone tablets with the rules on them. Moses told everyone to wait for him, and then he went up the mountain. As soon as he went, a cloud came along and covered the peak for six days. It looks like Moses wandered around for those six days, and on the seventh he finally found God hanging out in a fireball. Moses wound up not coming back down from the mountain for forty days.

Original text

God talked at Moses for a really long time up on that mountain, telling him all the rules he wanted the Israelites to follow. Here are some highlights:

• You’ll be put to death if you steal a slave and then sell it.
• You’re allowed to kill someone who breaks into your house, but you have to do it at night. If morning comes and the guy is still alive, he has to pay. If he can’t pay, you can sell him. If the stolen animal is found on him, he’ll pay double. Weird desert math.
• If you seduce a virgin and have sex with her, you’d better be prepared to marry her and pay her father her bride-price. If her father won’t give her up, you still gotta pay up.
• You will kill all sorcerers.
• Don’t boil a goat in its mother’s milk.

When he ran out of silly laws to talk about, God told Moses he was going to send an angel to lead the Israelites to Canaan and defeat the people who already lived there.

Original text 21 22 23

As soon as Moses got settled, God started rattling off his rules:

1. I am your only God.
2. You will not worship anyone or anything but me. I’m kind of a jealous bastard, so this is important if you want to stay on my good side.
3. Do not use my name in vain.
4. Remember not to work on the Sabbath.
5. Don’t be a jerk to your parents.
6. Don’t kill anyone.
7. Don’t cheat on your spouse.
8. Don’t steal shit.
9. Don’t gossip or spread rumors.
10. Be happy with what you have.

I guess Moses heard all of this, but to everyone else it just looked like thunder and lightning and a smoking mountain. They were a little freaked out.

Original text

A month and a half after leaving Egypt, the Israelites came to the wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Sinai. They all started whining to Moses and Aaron about how hungry they were and how they wished they would have just stayed in Egypt. Moses told them it was God who took them out of Egypt, not him, and the big guy could hear their complaining and was going to give them meat at twilight and bread in the morning.

That night, a bunch of quail came along and covered the camp. The next morning, there was something all over the ground. Moses told them it was bread and everyone should gather as much as they could, but they should not leave any of it leftover until morning. God was testing them, see, but they didn’t know that and they were afraid to eat it all and not have any left the next day. God was pissed that they didn’t trust him, so he made the leftovers grow worms and smell bad.

This went on for five days. On the sixth day, Moses told everyone that God wanted them to gather as much as they could and put aside as much as they wanted because there would be no bread on the ground in the morning. Of course nobody did this because God had just gotten them trained to not leave any leftovers. So when people went out on the seventh morning to find the stuff, God got mad and complained to Moses about people working on the Sabbath.

Incidentally, the stuff was called manna and the Israelites ate it for forty years, until they came to Canaan. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.

Original text

God told Moses that he wanted the first born of every Israelite to belong to him. I’m not sure what that entails. Moses reminded the people that it was because of God that they were leaving Egypt and that God hated leaven so nobody should eat any for seven days. Moses took Joseph’s bones with him, which is apparently something Joseph requested at some point. God led them through the wilderness toward the Red Sea by becoming a pillar of clouds in the daytime and a pillar of fire at night.

Before we move on, let’s take a look at this handy map:

The reason God led the Hebrews all over the freaking continent instead of just taking them right up the coast to Canaan was because he was afraid the hostile atmosphere would scare them and they’d turn around and go home. According to the website from which I got this map, the Israelites needed “Hebrew training” before they could handle Canaan.

Original text